


It Just Begins To Live

by cuttooth



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (also sort of), (sort of), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Brief sexual situation (not including Jon), Canon Asexual Character, Intimacy, M/M, Romantic Fluff, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The importance of being vulnerable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28454739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuttooth/pseuds/cuttooth
Summary: There is an ink-dark scrawl along the back of Martin’s calf that reads:You didn’t die here, did you?*These are the words that change your life.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/OMC (minor)
Comments: 103
Kudos: 469
Collections: End of Year Exchange 2020





	It Just Begins To Live

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fushiginokunino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fushiginokunino/gifts).



> For [Fushi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fushiginokunino), I hope you like it! <3
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful fatal_drum for beta reading!

“A word is dead when it is said  
Some say –  
I say it just begins to live  
That day.”  
\--Emily Dickinson

There is an ink-dark scrawl along the back of Martin’s calf that reads:

_You didn’t die here, did you?_

It bothers him, just a bit. He knows that in real life, scripta are rarely as profound or poetic as they're portrayed in books and films. Mostly they’re mundane, only given meaning in the moment of their delivery. But his is just...weird. 

His mum tells him to keep it covered up. It’s bad luck, she says, to have a scriptum that talks about death. She frowns when she says it, as if he’s done it on purpose. It’s just as easy to keep it covered, in any case; not as if he’s hiding it. 

He's twenty the next time someone sees it. Ehsan is Martin’s first real boyfriend, and they're in his bedroom when it happens. Things are getting heated, shirts coming off and hands sliding on skin and Martin is enjoying this too much to even feel self-conscious. Ehsan gives him a cheeky wink as he drags Martin's trousers down his legs, and then he suddenly stops.

"Oh, is that your scriptum?" he exclaims. "That's so creepy!" 

He grabs Martin's calf, the rest of him apparently forgotten, and leans closer to examine it, almost cooing with macabre delight. 

“What do you think it means?” he asks. Martin shrugs, awkward, because he’s down to his underpants and already feeling overexposed, and being scrutinized like some morbid curiosity isn’t helping. 

“Could be anything,” he says. Ehsan grins. 

“Could be a plot to a horror movie,” he says. “In the end it turns out you’ve been a ghost _the whole time!”_

He wiggles his fingers in a way that’s supposed to be spooky. Martin rolls his eyes as if it doesn’t matter, but he tucks his leg back behind him and kisses Ehsan to stop him talking about it. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but the whole thing still makes him uncomfortable. He can’t imagine in what circumstances someone asking him if he’s _died_ would change his life. 

*

When it happens, it turns out he was right; he _really_ couldn't have imagined these circumstances.

After he gets over the initial shock—and after they actually survive—Martin spends a while trying to convince himself it must have been to do with the worm attack. The near death experience, or his discovery of Gertrude’s body. Except he can’t stop thinking about Jon’s face when he said it, his earnestness and his uncertainty, how adorably flustered he got over having his academic pride punctured. 

After a while, he can’t stop thinking about Jon at all. 

Martin can’t say he’s happy about it. He’d hoped for something a bit more from his scriptum than ‘falling hopelessly in love with your boss,’ but as his mum used to say, hope and ten pence will buy you ten penny sweets. He’ll just have to live with it. 

Maybe he’ll get lucky, and it’ll turn out he _was_ a ghost the whole time after all. 

*

He comes close, in the fog. But Jon finds him. Jon tells him he’s not alone, and for the first time in a long time, Martin believes it. 

_You didn’t die here, did you?_

No, no he didn’t. He won’t. 

*

There is a tender thrill in discovering someone. 

Not that Martin doesn’t know Jon. He's seen Jon every shade of happy and sad, excited and exhausted and afraid. He’s watched and worried over him until it bruised; loved him for long enough now that it fits like his own skin. He _saw_ Jon, in the Lonely, in the most profound way imaginable. 

It’s the little things that are new, as they bump up against each other in the small space of the cottage, learning how the shapes of their selves fit together. The way Jon’s fingers slot idly between his whenever they’re close enough, regardless of what Martin might need his hands for. The way he hums when he cooks and sings in the shower. The way his eyes shine after Martin kisses him, his lower lip catching between his teeth with a breathy exhale. His feet like blocks of ice under the covers at night, and the way he insists on tucking them under Martin’s shins. 

It’s more than Martin could ask for; more than he’s ever expected to have. 

Martin is greedy, though. 

It comes to him in the shower one morning, as he scrubs down the backs of his legs, over the looping letters of his scriptum. 

_What does Jon’s say?_

It’s silly, he knows. Despite what rom coms might say, a person’s scriptum is as likely to come from a family member, a friend or a mentor, as from a romantic partner. It can even come from a complete stranger, a handful words from someone you might never see again. The idea of it being some sort of ‘soulmate indicator’ is pure fiction.

Besides, Jon is the Archivist, with all the spooky significance that title entails. It would honestly be more surprising if his scriptum _wasn’t_ about...Archivist stuff. It doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t have to do with Martin. 

(The thought that Jon’s scriptum might be something _Elias_ said makes Martin flare hot with irrational jealousy, and he pushes it away.)

Regardless, though, Martin wants to see it. He wants to read the words that changed Jon’s life—or that _will_ change it, because who knows if Jon’s had his spoken yet? He’s greedy, he knows. He’s a glutton for Jonathan Sims, wants to know him down to his bones. 

Wants to be known by him in return. 

Only a handful of people have seen Martin’s scriptum, and only because it’s impossible not to when the clothes come off. It's different with Jon, their intimacy shared in other ways, and so this has to be a _choice_ Martin makes. To show the truth of himself on purpose. To let Jon see the words he spoke scrawled on Martin’s skin, indelible proof of his importance in Martin’s life. 

The thought of being so deliberately vulnerable is heart-pounding; it isn’t something Martin’s ever been very good at.

For Jon, though, he thinks he can try. 

*

“I need to show you something,” he blurts that evening, while they’re curled together on the sofa. Jon looks up from the book he’s reading and props his glasses up on top of his head.

“Is everything all right?” 

“Everything’s fine!” Martin can hear the strain in his own voice, and rushes on before he loses his nerve. “I’ve just been thinking about...things, and I, uh… I'd like to show you my scriptum. If you want, that is?” 

“Oh,” says Jon, looking startled, and Martin wonders if he’s asked too much. Pushed too hard. Some people are very private about these things, and for all they’ve been through together, they’ve only been _together_ a week. He shouldn’t take it personally, he knows, even as his heart sinks in his chest.

“If you’d rather not—”

“No, no!” Jon interrupts. “I just—I wasn’t expecting it. If you’re sure, then yes, Martin, of course I’d like to see.” 

He sets his book down on the arm of the sofa, and his left hand gropes unconsciously for Martin’s right, the way it always does when it’s not otherwise occupied. Martin loves him so much it hurts. He props his foot up on the sofa cushion, then rolls up his trousers to reveal his calf, turning it so Jon can read the words imprinted on his skin. Jon’s eyes linger there for several moments, and when he looks up, his expression is wondering.

“Why then?” he asks. “I mean, other than the fact that we almost died.”

Martin’s had a long time to consider that exact question: why _that_ moment? Of all the things that have happened, all the words Jon’s spoken, why _those_ words? 

Really though, when he thinks about it, it couldn’t have been anything else. 

“I thought it was creepy, when I was a kid,” he says. “I mean, _‘you didn’t die here, did you?’_ sounds like something from a ghost story, you know? But in the end, it turned out it was just you being daft.”

“I was not being _daft,”_ Jon protests, affronted. Martin laughs and squeezes his hand. 

“You were being incredibly daft. And that’s...sort of the point. I already fancied you before that, though I also thought you were a bit of an arsehole.”

“Which I was.”

“Which you _sometimes_ were. But that conversation, that was the first time I realized you were just as scared and lost as I was. You let me see past ‘Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute’, and I saw _Jon._ And I liked him. Daft as he is.” 

Jon is silent for several moments, looking down at where the fingers of his left hand are twined with Martin’s right. When he lifts his head again, his eyes are wet. 

“Thank you, Martin,” he says solemnly, “For sharing this with me.”

“Oh, well, I just thought...you know.” Martin feels flayed open; tender and raw; but it's a good feeling, he thinks. He pulls Jon’s hand up and kisses the knuckles, turns it over to press a kiss to his palm. 

“At least this makes me feel a _bit_ less silly about mine,” Jon says, and pulls his hand out of Martin’s, reaching for the hem of his shirt. 

“You don’t have to—” Martin starts to say, but Jon’s already tugged his shirt up to show the neat curl of his scriptum, skimming below where his last rib should be, if he hadn’t given it away:

_Sorry, you haven’t seen a dog, have you?_

Martin frowns. It’s not an unusual sentence, and yet there’s something oddly familiar about it, something he almost recognizes, as if he’s heard it somewhere before— 

And he remembers. 

“Oh,” he breathes. “Jon...” 

He looks up. Jon’s eyes are even more wet, and he’s wearing a rather wobbly smile that Martin can feel reflected on his own face. 

“You have _no_ idea how put out I was when I realized,” Jon tells him, all exaggerated crossness. “I spent ages trying to convince myself I’d misheard you. Then after _that_ I spent ages researching false scriptum experiences, to prove that it could have been a mistake. Which of course I couldn’t, there are a few scattered reports but nothing substantiated or even credible. So there I was, and it just...didn’t make any sense! How could _that_ have been the moment that changed my life?” 

“Jon,” Martin says again, because he can’t say anything else right now, all the breath knocked out of his chest. He takes Jon’s hand back into his, letting their fingers twine together. 

“It took me a long time to figure it out,” says Jon softly. “But I got there in the end.”

“I love you,” Martin says, and pulls Jon into his arms, the shapes of them fitting together easily.

It’s not everything he wants to say, not even a start, but it’s the truth; ingrained on his soul as surely as the words on his skin.


End file.
